Wednesday update

Sorry, folks. The power went out last night.

Our friend with the large (and now somewhat flat) head is doing well. He's in some sort of body armor ('canned tuna,' Will said), and is scheduled to go for a walk this morning.

He's doing a thick liquid diet, and figuring out how to eat without moving his neck.

He's apparently already scheduled for facial reconstruction surgery Friday in Iowa City. I'm not sure how he gets from Madison to IC, but I've taken the top off the Subaru, so I'm ready to help out...

It sounds like everybody is already chomping at the bit to get out of the hospital.

Love to you all,
Kevin

Oh, shit...

I don't have a lot of details, but Cranium Man was biking in Wisconsin this weekend. There was a hill, a curve, and a patch of gravel. He landed on his face, smashing three(?) vertebrae and his sinus bones. He was airlifted to UW-Madison hospital Saturday, but they couldn't get a neurosurgeon until today.

As of today, I'm on facebook, because Robyn is posting updates there. Here's what I've got from there...

"Surgery supposed to happen today (Mon). will keep you all posted. Sam is getting less comfortable, and I;m sure surgery will change the discomfort to new places."

"Sam is FINALLY heading into surgery in a few moments...it will take 1/2 day, and they are putting some rods and screws in to help with the crushed T3 vertebrae. Looking at a collar for the cervical fracture--best case scenario--worst case = halo with head screws. Will have a back brace for 3 months at least. Will let you know how he progresses...."

"Sam's surgery is going well. Didn't get it started until just after 12:00--so far everything is routine! good news. btw-Tuna can fly."

"It is 6pm-still in surgery. No word on how much longer it will be. They say he is still doing well, and everything is 'standard' whatever that means."

"7 pm- Sam is out of surgery, will be in recovery for an hourish. They plan on keeping us for a week, so we may do facial recon up here as well. Will know more when he's awake and moving. robyn"

I'll let y'all know more as I hear about it.

I Promised...

I had forgotten about this until Uncle Dennis gave me crap the other night.

So here it is, a promise fulfilled. Here are some pictures from Africa to share:








And just so you know this wasn't all zoom feature, this is how close we got to our Elephant friend:




There was so much more than just the animals though. I'd post the highlights of my trip, but it'd take up too much space on the page. The people we met made the difference.

All you need is love

I'm having a hard time remembering that she doesn't want today to be sad. She wants today to be celebrated, like every other day.

I need to say thank you to all of you for making my life a little (or a LOT) brighter every day. Please know that there is a tremendous amount of love flowing from me to you, always :)

(I'm not as eloquant as Sam, but I think I said what I've needed to say for now)

April

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

--T. S. Eliot

My Mom used to say "T.S., Mr. Eliot!"

It's been almost a year now since we said goodbye to our dear friend Diana. Okay, we've been saying goodbye ever since, too, haven't we? It's April, though, no way around it, and the 28th will come, and then May 7th, when my Dad died. You can get your head on as straight as you think you need to, and an anniversary of grief is still there, patiently waiting for you to stop trying to "manage" it.

I was by Da Woods and Yvonne and I talked briefly about this month and what it means. Kevin was already hauling stuff again. I walked upstairs and out the door grateful that these two found each other and have understanding company.

That got me thinking as I got into the car and turned around about a conversation I had with Diana one night while the other boys were playing pool. I can't remember her exact words, but she said something to the effect that she didn't mind dying so much if it weren't that Kevin would still be here without her. I suppose she worried about what would happen when he didn't have to hold things together so marvelously (making the rest of us spouses look puny by comparison) any more.

I looked up the driveway at the hundreds of tulips and daffodils sprouting along the driveway, thought about Kevin and Yvonne moving things and cleaning and making space, and felt the sun shining on my face through the windshield.

What I felt just then was something that's hard to describe, a sense of Diana's presence, warm and approving and I remembered that beaming crooked smile that always said "you are exactly okay and I am with you and I totally approve."

I don't know much. I know less than I once did, certainly. But I know this:

She is with us and she approves.

I Solemnly Swear..

...that I will have pictures to post here after I go to Africa.


I promise I won't be the odd man out not posting pictures. :)

I can't say I have as nice of a camera, but I think it will do an ok job with the animals...so long as they stay still. So it looks like there will be a lot of pictures of Crocodiles and Hippos.

:) Lauren

Face

I spent a good deal of yesterday running back and forth between Cedar Rapids and Vinton, once because of my own lack of organization (forgot my gym bag), and once because of some drama at school that my son found overwhelming (no harm, no foul - he doesn't ask for much in this regard). In the end, I just took some hours I had banked and called it a wash.

It got me thinking about "blow over." My commute is a rural two lane stretch of Hwy 218, straight north through corn fields to Vinton, the county seat of Benton County. I put my camera on "fast" and shot about 80 pictures rapidly through the windshield. The best visuals seem to be with the sun behind the snow, so that the light reflects all the flakes and makes them stand out. I missed the best conditions, but these are still some nice COLD pictures.

I've been messing around with Facebook, something apparently a few of my middle aged friends are doing as well. It all feels a bit managed to me. It feels as though the site is primarily about self-definition (and obviously networking) and comes with more than a little spam and neo-spam. My friends may find this surprising, but I only have so much patience for self-definition. At the age of 50, I'm a little less involved in definition than interpretation. I'm defined, for God's sake; I'm just not sure what it means. Fussing with the meaning of things and keeping an eye on balance and pondering what comes next.

There's this guy I've known for quite a while, who appears, Zelig-like, at events and gatherings, spouting blather, hail-fellow-well-met, and talking about himself, mostly. He's where he should be all the time and when he's not he's with some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend. . . etc. Anyway, he was the second person to "friend" me on facebook. I know more about this guy's movements in the past three weeks than I ever cared to know. Now if I "un-friend" him, it will be announced all over my "network" as though we broke up. Definitely not worth it. Another woman posted her macrobiotic diet and the fact that her husband speaks three languages. I don't know her either, and I don't care what she eats. Or when.

Before I get dressed and drive north through the blowing snow to my eminently satisfactory but not stressfull enough (ironically) job, I will log on to facebook and try to think of some clever way to indicate that "Sam is sitting in a chair scratching his ass." which is what I do every morning before I get moving. If I log on the same time every day, that's what it's going to say, because that's what I DO this time of day.

Part of life, like snow, and my first "friend" on facebook. Cheers!

spiritual laundry

Hey happy new year to you all! I did my blogging at the Laundromat today. Just a cross reference here.

Kevin Crawley's pants are full.

Happy New Year

Here's to new beginnings and hope for a happy 2009. To get things started, I learned on Christmas Eve that there is another grandbaby on the way. This time it is my younger sister's daughter who got married in November 2007 and is expecting her first in early August. Guess I'll be traveling east this summer...

Cold enough to annoy sparrows

We had a high of zero the other day. I love weather. I love the adventure inherent in booger freezing face numbing cold. I think going out when it's 4 degrees and working up a sweat is a good idea.

The sparrows are the arbiters of avian popular opinion. First the sparrows come and if they congregate other birds will make an appearance. I was talking with John Swinton, or emailing him, and he pointed this out. This day the sparrows were definitely pissed off. They puffed their feathers and pulled in their necks, tried to double-tuck their wings down over their legs. They hung on tight with their desperately chilly toes and cursed the day their ancestors decided that Iowa winters were survivable. But, hell, a sparrow's gotta eat.

I tried to get a picture of the poor things trying to land on a moving birdfeeder with snow blowing around them, but I'm just not that good. It's hard work not freezing to death and they'd land and grab and blow off, nearly dislocating their little beaks as they slammed them against the feeder. Nothing graceful about it.









Normally these guys scatter if they see us in the window, but it was sheltered in the bush right next to the house and so the sparrows compromised for the most part. There they were, right outside the window glass from the dog, and they knew it. "Hell with it. Kill us. It's warmer over here."

We have booger stains all over the front window, just at Tye's nose level. Tye the ornithologist.



It was a good morning drinking coffee and watching bird antics with the dog. I just finished Close Range by Annie Proulx. It contains Brokeback Mountain and a number of other astoundingly beautiful stories, achingly sad. So I read and watched birds and thought about contrast, much like Else in her comment on my last post. Glad I'm not a sparrow.

God's eye on on him, but it looks like a cold job, thankless, and with little room for advancement.

That father ranting about a last minute Christmas visit with his institutionalized child knows he lost it somewhere. His kid's in someone else's care and he's left looking for some righteous ground to stand on. He'll bond with his kid against "staff" and prove to his kid that he can't give structure. Once again he'll confirm what his kid already knows. There's no safety this Christmas, either.

Sitting in my warm room, my toes scrunching soft Persian carpet, drinking dark java, I listen to my son talking to his friend over his XBox Live. Santiago is back in Medellin Colombia having Christmas with his mother's family. He and his cousin in Medellin log on and they all play zombie killing games together, bilingually, and gossip about their friends.

When I get lonesome, and I can't sleep I count my blessings instead of sheep and I fall asleep counting my blessings. Merry Christmas.

Crazy 'bout my Mercury

Housekeeping:

1. Happy Birthday Nancy! I don't expect anyone to completely fulfil the dp date reminder role. We were all busy doing other things and did not learn this skill, or at least I didn't. Carry on and we'll wish anyone a happy anything whenever we remember.

2. My blog instructions these days are in Spanish. I can mangle the language well enough that I'm not paralyzed, but I also don't recall doing anything to make this happen, so if you know where the language toggle is, please let me "apprender."

Robyn's Aunt Pauline and Uncle Jack bought this 1964 Mercury Montclair new. They always called it "the Merc." J.D., the most doting nephew, got it when Pauline passed away at past 90. She was fond of suggesting people "kiss my rosy red you-know-what." A good, strong, enduring character of great worth. J.D. fixed it up some and has left it at LeRoy's (his Dad's) next to the old Dodge truck LeRoy brought back from Nebraska because he couldn't bear to let it go. He'd always loved that truck. There they sit, out on LeRoy's property, tribute to automotive sentimentality (with which I totally sympathize).

As you may know already, I have found that taking my camera and ducking out of the house is a great way to absent myself from holiday banality, and this Thanksgiving was no exception. Yesterday I did some fussing and editing and discovered that I have some cool automotive concoctions here. So here you go, on this morning in Iowa, 8 degrees below zero, with a wind chill colder than Sarah Palin's heart.

OK. I'll start.......

Happy Holidays to all!
May the new year bring all that we hope for and more.
Tag, your it!

Happy Birthday Nancy!

I'm a day late, I think. dp was the person in charge of remembering this stuff, but I believe Nancy's birthday was yesterday.

The pie looks good. I may have to buy myself something similar...

Birthday Reflections

I'm a little late, but I feel like I need to do a thanks giving post.

Last year, of course, Thanksgiving was not a good holiday. I was basically waiting for surgeons to get back from their holidays to give dp some relief from the Horrible Awful Vertigo. I don't remember taking any time to be thankful for anything.

This year, I have much to be thankful for. I guess I've always felt blessed to belong to the particular family I do, but while this past year has seen us all battered and bruised, the love and support never waned.

I've got more and better friends than I deserve, and they too showed time and time again that they were there for me when the chips were down.

I feel a lot older than I did a year ago, maybe not much smarter, but probably a bit wiser. I've dealt with some serious challenges, but always with the very real and very helpful certainty that I was loved and accepted, at least by some people.

If you're reading this, you're one of the people for whom I am thankful.

My Turkey Day this year was much more normal. We went up to Colleen and Doug's place in Stoughton, and I introduced Yvonne to just about the whole famn damily. Twenty-five the first day, six more the next, with only four more to go. We ate, we partied, we bowled, and we ate some more. Nobody got to spend a lot of time together, but the early returns seem to be that everyone thinks everyone was very nice. We spent the weekend recuperating in da Woods. All in all, a very fine holiday.

Okay, birthday's over. Everybody back on your heads.

Happy Birthday Kevin

I hope you have a great day!

Okay, Else, by popular demand. . . Thanksgiving Redux

I'm collecting pictures of signs I like, so here's my first. The Lincoln Highway, for the uninitiated, was the first transcontinental road. It started out pretty rough and eventually was paved from coast to coast.

To really appreciate our Thanksgiving, you have to understand the context. First, Robyn has just been having a rough patch. Her folks are getting old and are showing it for the first time. There's the deal with JD, her brother, and his "lost love" (see Serial Monogamy blog in the archive), and to make matters worse we were going to leave to visit friends in Wisconsin and Robyn and her pal had a falling out and were starting to mend and so basically Robyn was so uptight that you could bounce quarters off her. The kids managed to schedule themselves for work. Damn!

When we got there, early, LeRoy was cleaning and we helped, which was really kind of fun and more meaningful than any ensuing conversation probably would have been, except about that time, JD brought up a subject that bugs Robyn about me (this I will censor for propriety's sake, and in case I run for office), and poor Robyn went off about it, right in front of JD and the girlfriend we're not supposed to like or something. (She's okay, really, except for having 27 cats and a handshake that involves some of the strangest body language I've ever seen.)

JD is familiar with all my foibles after all this time and he's looking at me like "who shot a rocket up her ass?" as I remind her that she has the upper hand here, since I'm not going to even have this conversation right now. Robyn calms down and then JD and I go off and have the first real conversation we've had in about two years, which constituted him apologizing over and over for unleashing his sister on me. (She was already pretty embarrassed by her outburst and this point, and while I'd have been pissed if she'd continued, I mostly needed to just let her settle, because he discomfort at this point was far worse than mine.)

So then LeRoy came up and we worked on getting the meal out. The centerpiece was a wild turkey that LeRoy killed with his new 370 pound, brand new, state of the art thermonuclear cross bow that has to have a special target because the arrows go right through a traditional target (set up so the misses go right into the neighbor's yard?). He must have really been attached to the bird, as it was mummified. Thoroughly dessicated, this bird. Think hush-puppies with a little of that "wild taste" everybody loves. We poured the juice back over it and the juice disappeared. Slurp.

We had a minimum of the usual characters, but my step in laws provided color. Mom hovers and coaches her teens through meal choices, how to sit, where to sit, not to get things dirty, et cetera. My kids avoid these kids by climing the tall pine trees in the yard, knowing the step cousins' Mom would not allow them to climb. Sap, y'know. Robyn commented to her step-sister that her 8th grade daughter could probably handle food choices today. She again rose in my esteem. Can't keep a good woman down.

The ride to Wisconsin was quiet as I pointedly did not scold my wife for yelling at me at the family event. She got together with her friend and it was okay. Work to do, but okay. It's a two way street this friendship thing and it's hard to figure out this conflict deal.

Other scores: Mom stayed sober (fake wine!), as did I (mostly), and since I'm basically having a great life, I think I'll make it on through the next Holiday, whatever the hell that is.

Peace and Obamalama! S.

Turkey Tag

Here's a picture I took on a romp up to Fall Creek Wisconsin to visit our friend Paul Tweed. He has an alternative science magnet middle and high school set up smack dab in the middle of Beaver Creek Reserve. The kids band owls and track muskies with GPS. For Phys. Ed. they strap on cross country skis and ski a loop in the park. Paul put it together by writing grants and talking to people in his district. It's called The Woodlands School, and they have a website. Very impressive. This is Paul's back yard. I'm a sucker for birch trees.

I'm checking in because I'm having my annual Thanksgiving "gush" and I think we need to check in on this. In my family, a "gush" is a kind of dopey affectionate feeling of well being, generally felt toward another person (pets included, excluding lizards and snakes -- sorry, but you just can't gush for a cold blooded animal; I question fish and small dogs as well, but there you go).

At any rate, this has been an important year for all of us in so many ways, I wondered if there wouldn't be some appropriate space here to reflect for a moment. Here goes. Feel free to chime in.
I'm really glad I had this man for a father, even though he was the definition of "high maintenance." He was breathtakingly honest and intelligent with that laser-like focus that I just can't manage. I'm more of a generalist. Our friend Seth has that kind of focus.

Now that it's just Mom and me, Mom diminishing, it's clearer who was who. Dad struggled with paranoia, but Mom has secrets she'll never tell, even to herself. Dad was by far the more open individual, once he decided he was comfortable.

The best thing about Dad is that he forgave me everything. He was just so glad I was his son he didn't give a damn about the rest of it. Anything I actually accomplished was gravy.

I couldn't understand why this drove my ex-wife crazy, but now, of course, I do. It's gotten me through a lot of rough water, knowing he had my back. It even allows me to forgive myself once in a while.

I'm glad Kevin found Yvonne.

I'm glad Barack won.

I'm very happy to feel a lot better than I did a year ago.

My kids are spectacular, great entertainment, and the source of gestalt in my life.

This sounds a little like an Oscar acceptance speech. I'm grateful that Diana died so well and taught me about it. Educators just can't quit.

I was really glad this praying mantis almost flew into my head as I was mowing the lawn.

It's good that Robyn stuck by me, and I her, during the last few years. As our kids get older, we turn toward each other again and we have been so busy in the last few years it's almost a getting-to-know-you process, and very malleable right now. I wouldn't have anticipated this and I'm glad for it. We needed to rearrange the furniture.

I was talking to a young man who has no useful family this Thanksgiving, since they were pretty abusive. He's pretty solid, but he's going to have to build his own network. I started counting on my fingers, and the family I have assembled is indeed broad, diverse, and strong. Full of fire, passion, imagination, sarcasm (just essential), and compassion.

I don't expect you'll forgive me everything. . . but you've already forgiven plenty.

Thanks.

Tag.

You're it.

Have you voted yet????

Just a gentle reminder!

Spooky Suburbia

Kevin called last night on his way to St. Louis to see Yvonne, wanting to check in.  I'm fine.  We're fine.

Robyn is stiff and sore, but walking well and definitely healing.  Caitlin is healthy and active again, and felt better just in time to act in the play at school (she missed a bunch of practice).  Walker stepped up and helped out with keeping us going.  Donna and Sharon brought food (!). Tye supervised and occasionally checked our crotches with this long nose.  It all worked.   We is family.

I can't recall whether Walker took this picture or I did but I like its surreal quality.  Surrealism is hard to achieve in a vinyl neighborhood.

I would like it very much if each of you would take a moment and check in as well.  Nancy's chicken coop has set the bar.  I volunteer my spooky moon and a big "all's well!" from our house.

How's college?  How's being a Democrat with two weeks left?  How's not being a Democrat (if this applies)?  How's having a girlfriend?  She has really nice bumper stickers.  Drives a Honda.  Masters in Linguistics.  What's up with him?   If I went into online dating I'd end up wiht a psychopath.  Kevin finds the other well adjusted person in a pool of dysfunction.

Kind of makes you think again about the idea of a Higher Power.

Nah.

S.

Coop and Re-coup

Apparently "Blogger" has changed the commenting process for blogs and it is not working here yet. Thus I am forced to actually post! :)

I wanted to say I hope Robin is recovering well after her surgery and that C-man's mom is better as well. My uncle is moving to a retirement center this week that specializes in Alzheimer's patients. He's always been "eccentric" but the last couple of years have been a downward spiral for his grip on reality. Thank goodness for my aunt, his sister, who has become his guardian and is managing to find the best care for him and convince him to cooperate.

The sketch here was drawn this weekend by a visitor to our little ranch. It is our chicken coop and duck pen.